The present invention generally relates to a wireless full disclosure analysis and monitoring system and, in particular, an ECG analysis and monitoring system used for the diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmia in ambulatory patients.
Remotely monitoring ambulatory patients for arrhythmia and promptly notifying a caregiver when a serious arrhythmia has been discovered presents many challenges. ECG (electrocardiographic) signals detected by a remote monitor are subject to noise from both patient movement and environmental sources. This noise must be reduced sufficiently to allow accurate reproduction of the ECG signals and accurate analysis of any arrhythmias present in that signal. In addition, the arrhythmia analysis algorithm must operate in a resource constrained, embedded system.
In some approaches, wide area wireless communications are employed in order to allow the transmission or notification of serious arrhythmias to the caregiver while the patient is ambulatory. However, wireless transmission is expensive in terms of both power consumption and airtime charges. In addition, wide area wireless network coverage is not always available in all areas, especially in patient's homes. In order to maintain the ability to notify a caregiver of a serious arrhythmia with low latency (near-real time), an alternate communication path is often required in the patient's home.
In order to manage power consumption and airtime charges, as well as the technician time it takes to review the transmissions, some approaches have limited remote monitor transmissions to as low a rate as possible by reducing the arrhythmia algorithm sensitivity to the minimum levels needed to maintain adequate diagnostic capability. Achieving the correct balance of algorithm sensitivity to positive predictivity in order to limit the amount of data transmitted can be challenging in the presence of signal artifact and when the patient exhibits a chronic arrhythmia.
Thus, there is a need for a cost effective remote monitoring system that can provide reliable full disclosure ECG analysis and reliable arrhythmia detection and transmission of samples of serious arrhythmias quickly to a caregiver, 24 hours a day. In particular, there is a need for a cost effective remote monitoring system that can provide reliable full disclosure analysis and reliable detection and transmission of samples of serious arrhythmias quickly to a caregiver, 24 hours a day.